Demand the UK police have national protocol for domestic violence training

Please sign and share this petition in an effort to make a national protocol of domestic violence training for all police in the United Kingdom. Actually, this type of training should be a requirement for all law enforcement worldwide because of the extreme existence of domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is all too common, with a report of about 10,000 cases in the UK that have been subjected to serious injuries and murder by someone who once loved the victim! The most frequent victims are women and children, many of them that are afraid to come forward to authorities. Sometimes these situations are not taken seriously. Just recently, a woman who reported threats to officers several times was killed by her former husband because the threats were not taken seriously. She was attempting to seek refuge at a domestic violence facility when she was killed. She requested and was refused a police escort! Threats should be recognized as what they really are; putting a person in possible danger. The system failed her because her death could have been prevented!!

Officers address domestic violence in various ways, often with measures that leads to a person’s death that might have otherwise been saved. Data from 34 out of 44 police forces in England, Wales and Scotland shows that more than 10,952 people, predominantly women, are at high-risk of violence at the hands of someone who does or once did love them. These figures are just an estimate since so much domestic abuse goes unreported. Many women do not report the dangers within a home out of fear they may be killed; not reporting it is a higher-risk for death or severe injuries.

The concern is that, if officers are not trained properly in the cases of domestic abuse, more mistakes are made leaving victims more vulnerable to death and injury. Lack of training could have prevented a mother and her two-year-old from being stabbed last year by her estranged partner. The woman had also been assessed as at high risk of homicide, but officers failed to inform her.

Police officers make assessments of the risk to victims when they attend domestic violence incidents. Most forces have adopted what is seen as a national risk protocol or domestic abuse, stalking and honor-based violence, but some still use their own assessments or the judgment of the officer on scene. There is no real national protocol of domestic violence training so that officers would be on the same page when it comes to these types of crimes. Actually, there appear to be huge discrepancies in the way forces assess the risk and gaps in record-keeping.

In the Metropolitan police area, where one call every six minutes is a domestic violence incident, only 87 women and children were assessed as high risk in one month. A program has been designed to provide national standards to identify those women and children who are at the highest risk from violent partners and ex-partners in order for police and other agencies to intervene early to safeguard women and children and target the perpetrators.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers on domestic abuse states "While forces may capture this information in different ways I am working with forces and the College of Policing to ensure a consistent and positive police response for every victim, focused upon ensuring their safety.” Please sign and share this petition in an effort to make a national protocol of domestic violence training for all police in the United Kingdom.